Is There a Double Double Standard For Calgary Police?

Posted by: Kenny Chan onJanuary 24th, 2013

We’ve all seen the video of the Calgary Police officers “street racing” to the local Tim Hortons that was first posted on our forums before spreading like wildfire across social media. It has since made it onto the pages of Yahoo News drawing tens of thousands of viewers to the video on youtube. I put street racing in quotes because anyone with a shred of common sense knows there was no racing, speeding maybe but even then it was likely within 5-10 km/h of the posted limit.

What I do find interesting is the comments by Calgary Police Chief Rick Hanson as quoted in the Calgary Herald:

“I’ve noticed that the speeds for two of the police vehicles [did not make] it to 50 kilometres per hour, but there’s one vehicle there that we’re looking at what he was doing and what his intentions were at that point in time.

“So until that review is done, we’ll wait to see what comes out of that.”

What does speed have to do with it? Is Hanson saying that you must be speeding to be racing? or you must be speeding to receive a stunting ticket? The Calgary Police Service should save their time by not investigating the actions of this officer because we can all agree what he did was harmless. Instead, resources should be put together to look into all the stunting and racing tickets that have been issued over the past 5 years to see how many of them did not involve speeding.

Personally I think most people are missing an important issue that is raised with this video. While it seems nearly everyone is saying that it is no big deal, they miss the fact that tickets are written (probably daily during the summer) for the exact scenario that is played out with the race to Tim Hortons.

I hope the officer does not receive any serious disciplinary action for what he did. I do however hope there is no double standard when it comes to ordinary citizens that are pulled over and ticketed for doing the same thing. As citizens we must take a day off (unpaid) to attend court, while the lead footed officer was likely spoken to for 20-30 minutes, while being paid I might add.